books in order

Rachel Seiffert Books In Order

Novels

  1. The Dark Room (2001)
  2. Afterwards (2007)
  3. Lore (2013)
  4. The Walk Home (2014)
  5. A Boy in Winter (2017)

Collections

  1. Field Study (2004)
  2. Architect / The Crossing (2011)
  3. Blue / Tentsmuir Sands (2011)

Novellas

  1. Dimitroff (2011)
  2. Dog-Leg Lane (2011)
  3. Francis John Jones, 1924- (2011)
  4. The Late Spring (2011)
  5. Reach (2011)
  6. Second Best (2011)

Novels Book Covers

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Rachel Seiffert Books Overview

The Dark Room

A debut novel that retells the history of twentieth century Germany through the experiences of three ordinary Germans. Helmut: A boy born with a physical deformity finds work as a photographer’s assistant during the 1930s and captures on film the changing temper of Berlin, the city he loves. But his acute photographic eye never provides him with the power to understand the significance of what he sees through his camera…
. Lore: In the weeks following Germany s surrender, a teenage girl whose parents are both in Allied captivity takes her younger siblings on a terrifying, illegal journey through the four zones of occupation in search of her grandmother…
. Micha: Many years after the war, a young man trying to discover why the Russians imprisoned his grandfather for nine years after the war meets resistance at every turn; the only person who agrees, reluctantly, to help him is compromised by his own past. The Dark Room evokes the experiences of the individual with astonishing emotional depth and psychological authenticity. With dazzling originality and to profound effect, Rachel Seiffert has re envisioned and illuminated signal moments of the twentieth century in all their drama and complexity.

Afterwards

Rachel Seiffert’s first book, The Dark Room, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, announced the arrival of a major writer; Afterwards fulfills that promise with a stunning novel about war and its brutal after effect. Alice is the protagonist of Afterwards, but this book is about the guilt harboured by people around her. There are two men in her life: her maternal grandfather, David, recently widowed, and her boyfriend, Joseph, each of whom keeps his past from his loved ones. David served in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion; Joseph, during a stint in the British army, served in Northern Ireland. Both, we learn, live with the memory of having killed in the line of duty. As Alice s relationship with Joseph develops, she senses there is something about his past that he keeps hidden. This is particularly galling given the personal and emotional details she has revealed to him namely, that Alice has never met her father, and her attempts to establish an epistolary relationship with him in adulthood foundered. After her grandmother s death, Alice finds the time spent with her grandfather awkward. She doesn t know him the way she did her grandmother, but feels obliged to visit and offer support. Gradually, it emerges that David s cold manner is traceable to events in Kenya, where he and his wife met. And as Alice tries to get to the bottom of Joseph s reticence, a series of heated family discussions brushes ever closer to David s secrets.

Field Study

With a range of settings as diverse as the Scottish seaside and post Communist eastern Germany, Seiffert uses the locations of these stories to bring her characters into relief. Powerfully evoking our human need for connection, Field Study takes us on journeys that demonstrate both the fragility and adaptability of our emotions. From a family that fears upsetting their little boy by moving house, to a wife who refuses to accept her husband’s condemnation of his own father; from a student conducting his scientific graduate studies of eastern European pollution to a wartime mother’s escape as she carries her children across a swollen river, Seiffert isolates and captures not only the underlying and compelling sorrow of love, but also the joy and desire for that love that keeps us alive.

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